Research Projects

This project will explore the use of recent additions to the CRISPR toolbox as a strategy to permanently suppress transcription of HIV, thereby allowing people with HIV to safely stop taking their daily antiretroviral treatment.  The CRISPR tools explored will include CRISPRinhibition systems and CRISPR Base Editors, both of which avoid genotoxicity associated with classical CRISPR-Cas9 knock-out approaches. This project will build upon recent work from our lab in which we established mRNA-lipid nanoparticles as an efficient delivery vehicle for the CRISPR machinery to primary T cells, the main cell type infected with HIV. The student will evaluate the ability of both CRISPR tools alone or in combination to durably suppress HIV transcription, and investigate the ability of this suppression to withstand different triggers that would normally reactivate viral transcription. These studies will include experiments using ex vivo samples from people with HIV. The student will become an expert in a wide range of techniques in virology, molecular biology and mRNA-lipid nanoparticle technology, and will be embedded in a multidisciplinary research group working on therapeutic development in the context of an HIV cure.  

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